233
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_25
Chapter 25
Paradox of the Lamb
25.1 Iconographic Communions
The All Saints Picture (Allerheiligenbild), “the ultimate beatitude of all believing
souls,” as Erwin Panofsky describes it in reference to the Ghent Altarpiece
(“Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” c. 1421–1431), is an expressly human devotional.
1
Within this deeply saturated schematic of human behavior is enshrined the Lamb,
whose quintessence, as painted in its terror and sorrow, strikes as surely one of the
most persistent universally insane paradoxes known to human kind (Fig. 25.1).
The animal’s iconographic significance, at least in Western Judeo-Christian traditions, belies the zeal with which our one primate species among hundreds rallies
to its slaughter. It’s as if the majority of our receptor genes involved with killing are
those very internal semions that have mutated. Their affiliation with the irrational
and thoroughly contradictory nature of reverence has spilled out into a thoroughfare
of sacrifice and cruelty. Its apotheosis is a genotype that spells cruelty, courting nullity whose fuel is that paradox that lives in abandonment of love. Its engine is heartlessness. Only a small number of those genes devoted to restraint and sparing
life—whichever they may be—appear to be functional from the instant we are all
cast on to the shores of earth in a weathered and disoriented condition. As pessimistic a view as this may be, looking to one another and finding, apparently, the confirmation bias that is comfort in misery, to empower the full ramification of this
genotypic expression, so full of contrarian aptitudes and permanent vitriol, the lamb
(and a far greater number of sacrificed adult sheep) is dying proof.
How many of the millions of tourists annually include in their visit to Ghent a
meal comprising as many spare ribs as one can devour, as advocated in one regional
1 See Early Netherlandish Painting—Its Origins and Character, by Erwin Panofsky, The Charles
Eliot Norton Lectures, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1953, Volume 1,
p. 212.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_25
Chapter 25
Paradox of the Lamb
25.1 Iconographic Communions
The All Saints Picture (Allerheiligenbild), “the ultimate beatitude of all believing
souls,” as Erwin Panofsky describes it in reference to the Ghent Altarpiece
(“Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” c. 1421–1431), is an expressly human devotional.
1
Within this deeply saturated schematic of human behavior is enshrined the Lamb,
whose quintessence, as painted in its terror and sorrow, strikes as surely one of the
most persistent universally insane paradoxes known to human kind (Fig. 25.1).
The animal’s iconographic significance, at least in Western Judeo-Christian traditions, belies the zeal with which our one primate species among hundreds rallies
to its slaughter. It’s as if the majority of our receptor genes involved with killing are
those very internal semions that have mutated. Their affiliation with the irrational
and thoroughly contradictory nature of reverence has spilled out into a thoroughfare
of sacrifice and cruelty. Its apotheosis is a genotype that spells cruelty, courting nullity whose fuel is that paradox that lives in abandonment of love. Its engine is heartlessness. Only a small number of those genes devoted to restraint and sparing
life—whichever they may be—appear to be functional from the instant we are all
cast on to the shores of earth in a weathered and disoriented condition. As pessimistic a view as this may be, looking to one another and finding, apparently, the confirmation bias that is comfort in misery, to empower the full ramification of this
genotypic expression, so full of contrarian aptitudes and permanent vitriol, the lamb
(and a far greater number of sacrificed adult sheep) is dying proof.
How many of the millions of tourists annually include in their visit to Ghent a
meal comprising as many spare ribs as one can devour, as advocated in one regional
1 See Early Netherlandish Painting—Its Origins and Character, by Erwin Panofsky, The Charles
Eliot Norton Lectures, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1953, Volume 1,
p. 212.